different significance of it. Then he pushed her away by the shoulders
and held her where he could look into her face.

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Don't care about what?"

It didn't seem like bravado--like an acted out pretense, and yet of
course it must be.

"Don't," she said. "Because I know. I've known all day. I read it in the
paper this morning."

From puzzled concern, the look in his face took on a deeper intensity.
"Tell me what it is," he said very quietly. "I don't know. I didn't read
the paper this morning. Is it Harriet?" Harriet was his other
sister--married, and not very happily, it was beginning to appear, to an
Italian count.

A revulsion--a sort of sick misgiving took the color out of Rose's
cheeks.

"It isn't any one," she said. "It's nothing like that. It's--it's that
case." Her lips stumbled over the title of it. "It's been decided
against you. Didn't you know?"

For a moment his expression was simply the absence of all expression
whatever. "Good lord!" he murmured. Then, "But how the dickens did you
know anything about it? How did you happen to see it in the paper? How
did you know the title of it?"

"I was in the court the day you argued it," she said unevenly. "And when
I found they printed those things in the paper, I kept watch. And to-day
..."

"Why, you dear child!" he said. And the queer ragged quality of his
voice drew her eyes back to his, so that she saw, wonderingly, that they
were bright with tears. "And you never said a word, and you've been
bothering your dear little head about it all the time. Why, you
darling!"

He sat down on the edge of the table, and pulled her up tight into his
arms again. She was glad to put her head down--didn't want to look at
his face; she knew that there was a smile there along with the tears.

"And you thought I was worrying about it," he persisted, "and that I'd
be unhappy because I was beaten?" He patted her shoulder consolingly
with a big hand. "But that's all in the day's work, child. I'm beaten
somewhere nearly as often as I win. And really, down inside, leaving out
a little superficial pleasure, I don't care a damn whether I win or
lose. A man couldn't be any good as a lawyer, if he did care, any more
than a surgeon could be any good if he did. You've got to keep a cold
mind or you can't do your best work. And if you've done your best work,
there's nothing to care about. I honestly haven't thought about the
thing once from that day